Rick Mofina - In Desperation

“Then why didn’t you come to the funeral?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

“Why? If only you had come home before they were killed. You could have worked things out with them. They searched everywhere for you.”

“I just couldn’t.”

“Why? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“It’s too hard to explain. Please don’t judge me.”

“Judge you? Cora, I don’t even know you.”

She turned to the counter for a tissue box.

“I go by Cora Martin.”

“Martin? Did you get married?”

“No, I changed it because of, well, because of mistakes.”

“Is that why you didn’t want us to find you?” He shook his head in disappointment.

“Jack, it’s not easy to explain. You have every right to resent me,” she said. “I’m not seeking forgiveness, but resentment can be a poison. I mourn the time we’ve lost. I regret choices I’ve made. Don’t take your anger out on me now, Jack. I need your help. I have to get Tilly home safe.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Gannon took a long, deep breath and Cora related every detail from the night before. He listened, saying little until she’d finished.

“I don’t know why this is happening to us,” she said. “I don’t know who to turn to, Jack. I thought you would have sources, people who know about this stuff and that you would know what to do. Help me find out who took her. Help me get her back.”

“Call the police, Cora.”

“No. They said they would kill her if I went to the police.”

“Are you involved with drugs in any way, Cora?”

“No.”

“But you were?”

“Yes. I used drugs, yes, but that’s all in the past. I’ve changed my life.”

“No one from your past would do this?”

God, I hope not. They told me I would never be free from what I did. Never. They told me I would always be looking over my shoulder. I can’t tell Jack. I can’t tell anyone. I have to protect Tilly.

“Cora, does this have anything to do with your past life?”

“No, I’ve been living a clean life, a good life, for years.”

“What about Lyle? You say you’re dating. What do you know about him? Is he involved in drugs?”

“If he is, he’s hidden it all from me.”

“Can you find him?”

“I’ve been trying and trying. He’s disappeared.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Only you-and I called Tilly’s school.”

“You told her school she was kidnapped?”

“God, no, I said she wouldn’t be in today. Only you know what’s happened, Jack.”

“From what I know about these things, they usually involve a drug debt. The cartels will kidnap someone close to get their money. That looks like the case here.”

“Maybe it’s all a mistake?”

“Call the police, Cora.”

“But they said-”

“You have to call them, or it looks like you’re involved.”

Cora put her hands to her mouth, nodded, then reached for her cordless phone. Her fingers trembled as she pressed 911.

“I need the police. My daughter’s been kidnapped…”

As she stayed on the line confirming her name and address, Gannon walked through the house, finding Tilly’s room. Police would soon process the room but he wanted to see it, to get a sense of his niece.

Her white-and-pink bed was unmade, left the way it was when the invaders abducted her from it. On the wall nearby there was a cork bulletin board plastered with birthday cards, a drawing of two people holding hands called Mommy & Me, and photos of Tilly with her friends, their smiles and eyes blazing with adolescent zeal.

She sure resembled Cora.

Under the board was Tilly’s desk. Math, history and science textbooks were stacked neatly on it to one side. Also on the desk he saw Tilly’s homework: a handwritten essay. He began reading it:

The Swiss Family Robinson

Book Report

by Tilly Martin

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss is an exciting story about a family who is shipwrecked on a deserted island and how they must work together to do all they can to survive…

“…how they must work together to do all they can to survive…”

The significance of her words jolted Gannon. He studied Tilly’s neat cursive style, the forward slant, the generous looping of the g, y and p. He recognized that it was precisely the way he wrote.

A family trait.

It hit him full force that Tilly was his blood and that he was her uncle. That’s when he heard something for the first time since entering the bedroom.

Ticking.

It was coming from the metal clock with a clown’s face on her dresser. It grew louder, with the exaggerated smile of the clown screaming to him that time was ticking down on his niece’s life.

Phoenix, Arizona

S omething’s not right here.

“Play the mother’s call again.”

Special Agent Earl Hackett concentrated as his partner, Bonnie Larson, turned on her pocket-sized recorder and replayed the 911 call Cora Martin had made twenty minutes ago.

As Hackett wheeled their unmarked sedan from the FBI’s Phoenix headquarters he got a bad vibe about this case. After he and Larson had listened to the call several more times Hackett reviewed the key facts.

The mother says two men in police uniforms kidnapped her daughter. These “cops” said her employer, Lyle Galviera “distributed their product” and stole five million dollars. She says it happened at 12:30 a.m., but calls it in now, more than twelve hours later.

“This is a cartel operation,” Hackett said as Larson activated the dash-mounted cherry.

The engine hummed and they cut through traffic to the expressway. While Larson worked on her cell phone gathering background from analysts at the field office, Hackett assessed matters. Cora Martin’s call first went to the County Sheriff’s deputies. They responded, took Cora’s initial statement and were backed up by Phoenix PD, which had the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement Task Force. The so-called HIKE unit was created when Phoenix became America’s kidnapping capital, averaging a kidnapping a day, usually arising from drug and human smuggling wars. But lately, HIKE was stretched. And because this new case involved a child and potential interstate flight, it fell to the FBI. Hackett and Larson had the lead, with support from other agencies.

As they drove across Phoenix, Hackett boiled things down.

Most of these cases involved criminal-on-criminal acts. Many times people never reported them to police. They paid the ransom, cleared the drug debt and the hostage was released.

Or things ended with a corpse.

You could argue that there were no true victims in this type of crime, but this one involved an eleven-year-old girl so he kicked his biases aside. As the city blurred by, he undid his collar button and loosened his tie. His gnarled face fixed into his perpetual grimace, the flag of his life as a twice-divorced hard-ass who was raised in Yonkers.

What did he have in this world?

Two ex-wives; four grown children, none of whom would speak to him; a slight limp from a gunshot wound; and a bastard’s attitude that hardened as he counted the days to his retirement.

Hackett couldn’t remember the last time he smiled. Maybe when the Cardinals won a game? His outlook was shaped by the crap he’d faced from his time as the FBI’s legal attaché in Bogotá, Guatemala City and Mexico City. He was intimate with the work of narcoterrorists. His limp was a daily reminder of his role in the botched rescue attempt of an American aid worker, taken hostage by cocaine traffickers in Colombia.